The cooperative sector in Thailand is nearly a century old
with a credit cooperative of small indebted farmers set up in 1916. As of
January 2002, there were 5 617 cooperatives with more than eight million
members. The three-tiered sector is made up of primary cooperatives at the
village level, federations of three or more primary cooperatives at the
provincial level and national federations of cooperatives.

There are an estimated 3 582 agricultural cooperatives - 64
percent of the total - with thrift and credit cooperatives making up another 24
percent. Service cooperatives (4 percent) and consumer cooperatives (8 percent)
make up the rest.

All cooperatives are affiliated to the apex Cooperative League
of Thailand (CLT), a statutory body set up in 1968 to promote cooperative
affairs and facilitate communication among cooperatives, government and foreign
institutions, as well as conduct research and offer technical advice. Other
agencies dealing with cooperatives are the National Cooperative Development
Board, the Office of the Registrar of Cooperatives, the Cooperative Promotion
Department (CPD) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, the
Cooperative Audit Department and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural
Cooperatives (BAAC).

The primary objective of the sector is to organize small
producers to enable them to derive the benefits of large-scale business
operations. The government organizes a number of training and other projects
that promote cooperatives and work on cooperative principles. Good training
manuals are being used for capacity-building in the areas of organization,
management and good business (FAO 1998; CLT 2002).

Women's cooperative groups

Cooperatives reach out to a large number of rural people and are parent institutions
for about 6 000 smaller rural women's groups in activities that include:

Thrift

Credit

Bulk purchase of raw material and sale to members

Production

Marketing

However, about half of these groups are now defunct. A large
number of women's groups registered with cooperatives had availed of a
government loan to assist rural people after the economic crisis of the late
1990s. Many of them presented the cooperatives and the government with business
plans that were not viable. Some businesses failed and the groups lost either
the whole or part of their working capital assistance. In several cases, women's
group members/leaders did not use the money for the stated business purposes and
never returned the money to the group's account with the cooperative.

One-fourth of the surviving groups have good business
operations. Others need to build their capacities to improve business
performance. Typically, 30 to 50 percent of the members in these groups are
active participants in the group's business, working three to four hours a day.
Another 50 percent of the women's groups in business face problems related to
accessibility and cost of raw material, product quality, insufficient sales and,
therefore, insufficient work for group members.

A majority of the existing women's groups seek support from
the Cooperative Promotion Department to improve their performance.

While women's cooperative groups have been set up as part of
the government's efforts to help increase the incomes of women, the focus is
more on providing support than on building capacities, thereby creating
dependence on various government departments.

Rural women's cooperative groups have several needs for
enhancing the viability and sustainability of their businesses. Some of these
can be met by training, while others require different kinds of
support.

They need capacity-building support which improves their
ability to manage their own businesses. This attitude must be promoted both
among members of women's groups as well as the facilitators.

The aim of this training kit is to assist rural women to
become individual or group entrepreneurs and managers of cooperative businesses
instead of helping set up enterprises per se.

Rural women's cooperative groups in Thailand cover a wide
range of businesses. Some of their training needs are the same, for example
those relating to business and accounting concepts. Other training needs,
especially those related to technology, differ across sectors.

Several of these needs can be met by training members of the
women's groups. As a long-term strategy, training is better than providing
services because it enables the women to take charge of their own
businesses.

The following needs have been stated by rural women's groups
and identified by government staff and trainers:

The major objective of the kit is to provide a tool for
enhancing the viability and sustainability of rural women's cooperative
businesses by helping build their capacities to manage, promote, expand and
diversify their businesses.

The kit can be used by CPD staff to help transform the rural
women's groups into vibrant cooperative businesses. The aim is to
assist:

the CPD to move from being a provider of finance and support, to becoming a
facilitator; its staff to be catalysts for promoting entrepreneurship by rural
women instead of being hand-holders;

rural women's groups
to move from dependence to self-reliance and from being small income generating
groups to vibrant cooperative businesses.

The training kit also offers a tool for initiating a women
farmer demand-led process for identification and delivery of production support
services. It will enable rural women's cooperative groups to understand their
businesses better, articulate their needs, be business rather than
grant-oriented and improve their businesses. This, in turn, will help improve
CPD response to the enterprise support needs of the women's groups and cultivate
entrepreneurial promotion attitudes among CPD staff.

Key elements of the training kit

1. Attention to attitudinal change: The entrepreneurial
attitude is the key to starting and sustaining enterprises. This attitude needs
to be instilled in both women's group members as well as facilitators.

2. Attention to gender relations: This is a neglected
subject with a lack of gender- disaggregated data on cooperatives, particularly
on membership, management and leadership. In general, both women and men are
reluctant to challenge the positions of men in top leadership positions. A note
and a handout offer guidance on steering discussion on the subject.

3. Attention to the Thai cultural context: The ways in
which Thai women and trainers learn best have been taken into account while
designing the methodology and training material.

4. Focus on four rural enterprise sectors: The sectors
have been chosen from those with a greater concentration of women's groups and
those selected for the government's One Tambon, One Product scheme. A
regional balance has also been attempted in the selection of the sectors. The
following sectors and regions have been selected:

Food: all regions Textiles:
northeast Thailand Handicrafts:
north and central Thailand Wood:
north and northeastern Thailand

How to use the kit

This training kit can be used for a single training programme
of two to three weeks, on a half-day or full day schedule. However, this is by
no means the only way it can be used.

It is good to cover all sections in the training kit over a
one-month or year-long period to impart basic enterprise training to the women
so they can take care of the management and growth of their own
businesses.

The training modules

1. Introduction to the programme/objectives
sharing2. Concept of business3. Gender issues in
cooperative women's group businesses4. Costing & pricing5.
Bookkeeping and financial statements6. Marketing7.
Savings, risk management and use of profits8. Business
plan9. Leadership and team work10. Networking11.
Monitoring and evaluation of businesses12. Evaluation of
training13. Sector case studies

Flexibility in use

The kit offers flexibility in:

topics to be taught

time duration of the programme

methodology and material used

Each section is divided into several sessions. Trainers can
pick up sessions that are most suited to the needs of their trainees. For
instance, they may choose a three-day training programme with one day devoted to
cooperative principles, another to marketing and a third to bookkeeping. Or they
may choose a three- day programme on marketing alone and follow it up with a
three-day programme on bookkeeping. The training material on each topic can be
adapted for in-depth and longer duration training or for short duration
training.

Sometimes, trainees who are already in business cannot
participate all day in the training. For instance, those engaged in dairying
must take care of cattle early in the morning and then in the afternoon.
Trainers should design flexible sessions suited to the trainees'
needs.

The kit includes four different handout sets, along with case
studies covering the four sectors. The case studies can be used for
sector-specific training programmes. The kit can also be used to train
participants from more than one sector by using case studies from each
sector.

Selecting the training modules

The trainees must go through the entire set of skills and
attitudes training for a good understanding of rural cooperative business.
Groups already established in business may only want to learn about bookkeeping
and marketing and may not see the need for learning about business ideas
generation.

However, such groups may reach a stage when the future
potential of their product range is limited and they find it necessary to look
for a new business. If they do not have skills in generating business ideas,
they will have to seek outside help. The skills for business ideas generation
must, therefore, be acquired by all rural women's cooperative enterprises and
not only by those in the start-up stages.

The logic for acquiring most other entrepreneurial skills is
similar. It is better to provide members of a rural women's cooperative
enterprise with advance training in these skills rather than wait for a time
when these are needed for solving a specific problem.

Each module has three elements. The first introduces the
module, informing trainers/participants what will be learnt in that module. The
number of sessions and estimated time are also given at the beginning of each
module.

This is followed by a description of the sessions, a session
guide and the material/handouts needed for each session. Finally, a few pages
summarize what has been learnt. This also serves as a checklist to evaluate
whether participants have acquired the required level of learning.

The training modules in the kit include basic enterprise training for all rural
women's cooperative groups. There may be need for additional training in technical
subjects, like quality of production, technology, type of weaving, cost reduction,
design, packaging, etc. The CPD uses its guest faculty for teaching these subjects
to groups. This makes it possible to bring the best and most appropriate technology
and design expertise to train the women's groups. However, attention to the
following aspects will make guest faculty training more efficient and effective:

The guest faculty should be used only for technical subjects; the CPD
should build internal expertise for basic enterprise training; the training
modules should be built into the CPD's annual training programmes.

Guest faculty should be given a clear brief on the subject to be taught
and the learning to be achieved at the end of the programme.

It is often useful to give a clear brief on how to teach; external trainers
should be supported in establishing a participatory learning process through
answering questions raised by participants and checking whether the answers
have been understood.

Time limits must be set for the guest faculty as it is important to respect
time constraints faced by rural women.

As far as possible, there should be practical training and demonstration,
involving women participants, and not just lectures and talks.

Sometimes guest trainers can get carried away and give lectures, but these
are not as effective as providing the women trainees an opportunity to practice
and interact freely with the trainers.

Planning the training

Using own trainers

The strength of the CPD is its countrywide network of training
facilities at the provincial level. It is better for the CPD as well as CLT to
develop in-house training capacities. External trainers are often not aware of
the developments in rural women's cooperative groups and may not know how to
teach the subject in a manner suited to the needs of the latter.

Selecting enterprise trainers

ExperienceAttitudeGood business
skillsGenderMotivatedNetworked

Selecting the trainers

Rural enterprise training needs not only experience but also
an attitude emphasizing self-reliance rather than dependence. Trainers must have
good business skills themselves and it is useful if some of them have
established or managed businesses. Officers with spouses in business often make
good enterprise trainers. The trainers must be motivated for capacity-building;
they also need good contacts with other support agencies so that they can refer
the trainees to specialist services needed by rural women entrepreneurs.
Finally, it is important that there are as many women as men in the trainer
group. Women trainers serve as role models and are better able to inspire women
trainees.

Training of trainers

It is necessary to have regular training of trainers (TOT)
programmes so that a large number of trainers for training rural women's
cooperative groups are available. Regular TOTs will also ensure that when
trainers are transferred across regions, others will be available to continue
the training.

Participatory training should be an essential element of the
TOT programmes. Participatory training techniques are the main characteristic of
the training kit and have been found useful by the participants.

Preparation for training

It is important to ensure that the trainers have enough time
for the planning, preparation and conduct of the training. The Directors of the
CPD regional training centres must give priority to the training of the women's
groups and provide them with the time and budgets required.

A seating arrangement that is U shaped is recommended for the
training instead of the traditional, classroom-seating as this facilitates
participation by all trainees.

Selecting the trainees

Although the training modules are meant for all members of
rural women's cooperative groups it may not be possible to train all members at
the same time. In such cases, specific modules can be used with group members
responsible for those tasks.

The selection of the trainees is critical to the success of
the training. The modules must also be selected according to the needs of
prospective participants. The trainers must spend time with the participants,
analysing their needs before inviting them for the training.

Moreover, the participants must be grouped on the basis of
training needs. For instance, if the training is in accounts, group members
responsible for accounts must be invited. Different members of a group must be
invited as participants to the training programmes. When only group leaders
attend each training programme, the impact is limited. Group capacity-building
is more effective when different members of the group are trained in
rotation.

The priority target members for the modules are listed in
table below:

Module

Priority for participating members

Introduction and objectives sharing

All members, group leaders, local leaders and leaders/managers
of parent cooperatives